A respected Swiss scientist, Conrad Gessner, might have been the first to raise the alarm about the effects of information overload. In a landmark book, he described how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both “Confusing and harmful” to the mind. The media now echo his concerns with reports on the unprecedented risks of living in an “Always on” digital environment.

The world has transitioned from a manufacturing-focused to a service-focused and then to a digital-focused economy – a “data” economy. With everything becoming digital there is a flood of data: “It’s only taken four years for Facebook to have 400 million pages”.

Royal Pingdom ha fatto uno studio sulla distribuzione delle età tra gli utenti americani di social network. Dicono: “To get consistent age data for the various sites we used site demographics information for the United States gathered from Google’s Ad Planner service and then did some additional calculations to get all the data we needed”. Nel post originale, Ages of social network users, altri chart interessanti.

Journalist, blogger, entrepreneur. On tech culture and society since 1991. Author of a book about Web 2.0 and Social Media in 2006. Co-founder of a startup in 2010. Winner of Premio Nazionale per l'Innovazione del Presidente della Repubblica Italiana in 2012. Now Partner and Advisor at Fashion Technology Accelerator.